The Question No One is Asking Donald Sterling

By George E. Curry NNPA Columnist |
5/9/2014, 11:09 a.m.

Fifty years ago, Thurmond led the filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, still the longest debate in Senate history.

Thurmond referred to Negroes as “nigras.” But while publically despising blacks, he had a different attitude in the bedroom, impregnating his parents’16-year-old maid. The daughter of that encounter, Essie Washington-Williams, wrote in her autobiography, “As much as I wanted to belong to him, I never felt like a daughter, only an accident.”

Armstrong Williams, a black conservative who began working Thurmond in 1978, recalled the senator confirming he was Washington-Williams’ biological father.

“The subject came up again while the senator and I were attending a South Carolina State football game in Orangeburg. He mentioned how he had arranged for Mrs. Williams to attend the college while he was governor…,” Williams wrote. “‘When a man brings a child in the world, he should take care of that child,’ he told me, and added, “‘She’ll never say anything and neither will you. Not while I’m alive.’”

And neither did – until after Thurmond’s death.

Considering the history of Thomas Jefferson and Strom Thurmond, no one should have been surprised when Donald Sterling told his mistress, who described herself has part Mexican and part black:

“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?…You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games…
“I’m just saying, in your lousy f* Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with, walking with black people…Don’t put him (Magic Johnson) on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games.”

Donald Sterling, far from being a rarity, simply added another link to the long, scandalous U.S. history of hypocrisy.